Chalk Art, Illustrations, Digital Painting, and Cartoons by Artist Eric Maruscak

So I’ve made a new purchase, a Ricoh GX100 digital camera. This awesome little piece of equipment is going to allow me to do something I’ve wanted for a long time… take time lapse videos of my chalk mural creations from start to finish.

Just a quick update tonight with a cartoon drawing I recently did of a Hula Dancer mascot for Ridley-Lowell, a technical training school of business located in New York and Connecticut. They have a program called Let Us Help You, and wanted to abbreviate it to LUHU. They thought that the abbreviation had a slightly island or Hawaiian sound to it, and was close to the term hula, so it was decided that a hula dancer would make an excellent mascot.

Thus my cartoon sketching commenced. After scanning through some reference images, I found a pose I liked and set out to craft the character. The pencil drawing quickly came together, with my original idea being that I would place her on a beach surface with some palm trees to create a sense of environment. Click on the image to the right to see the enlarged pencil sketch.

Recently my friend Melanie, who is an art teacher at a local school, told me I was entered into their “Art Madness” competition. This is basically a bunch of artists going head-to-head in a “Final Four” type bracket to figure out who is the ultimate artist (in the students opinion of course.) Neither time nor location has any bearing on who battles who to begin with, so you can imagine my feelings when I learned I was randomly up against Michelangelo in the first round.

OK, what the heck, one more video to post… why not. This time it was my last appearance of 2009 at the Big Apple Con, where I recreated a Joe Quesada and Jim Lee combo illustration of Spiderman and Batman into a 9 foot wide by 13 foot tall chalk mural.

Hey everyone. I missed posting this after it was put up on youtube.com so I thought I would put it in a blog for all to see and enjoy. When I was making the Soul Eater Chalk Art for FUNimation at the New York Anime Festival, I was interviewed by the Japan Society about my artwork. It was a nice break as I had been working non-stop since early in the morning. We talked for about 10 minutes regarding all things artsy, and I think it turned out pretty good.

You may have notice some minor shuffling around on the site. I have moved some elements, changed my archived posts to a drop-down menu, but most importantly I have added an Artwork Galleries section to my left navigation panel. Being one of the slowest people with HTML in the world means this was no small feat for me. It also means there is now quick one-click access to a bunch of my art in nice, organized categories. My posts will still be as entertaining as ever, especially when it comes to convention appearances, but now you can go through a whole bunch of images in these galleries if you just want to look at some art without all that reading.

This past weekend was the Big Apple Con in New York City, and I was in attendance creating another giant chalk art mural for the show. This time I was asked to recreate the cover of a Wizard Publication from 2003. The cover art was by both Joe Quesada and Jim Lee, and since these were the co-guests-of-honor at the convention it made perfect sense, so I set to work trying to do justice to the incredible art of these well known illustrators.

Hey everyone. If you haven’t heard, I am on the guest list and will be appearing at the Big Apple Con this October 16th through the 18th. What will I be drawing this time around? I don’t know yet, but I expect final art to come this week. I see that some of the guests of honor include Jim Lee and Joe Quesada, as well as Joe, Andy and Adam Kubert and even William Shatner, so I guess the sky is the limit when it comes to possibilities.

OK, this its TOTALLY cool. As I mentioned in my last post I recently appeared at the New York Anime Festival and created a 9 foot wide by 13 foot tall chalk art mural based on the Anime Soul Eater. The piece took 30 hours to make, and everyone seemed pleased with the end result. At the end of the show we were even able to stand the mural for a few hours so that everyone could get great pictures of it. You can see the photos of the progress and finished chalk art in my New York Anime 2009 Soul Eater Chalk Art Mural post here.

Hey everyone… I’ll be attending the New York Anime Festival this weekend, and over the course of the entire show I’ll be on the floor of the Javitz Center in Manhattan creating a giant chalk mural of art from the Anime Soul Eater. I am being brought by FUNimation, and will actually be set up right near their booth in the front of the hall.